Heretofore, a toilet for animals such as cats and dogs kept as pets is provided with a box-like toilet-container with an open upper part and an excretion disposal material, which is granular, contained in the toilet-container. In addition, a technique has been proposed in which an excretion disposal material is formed from granular matter provided with a core portion which is composed mainly of pulp and a covering portion which is configured to include a highly absorbent resin and to cover the core portion.
By employing such granular matter provided with the core portion and the covering portion as an excretion disposal material, when excreted urine is absorbed by the granular matter, the highly absorbent resin constituting the covering portion swells and sticks to adjacent granular matter, to thereby form an aggregate. As a result, an owner of a pet can easily remove granular matter contaminated with urine by removing the aggregate of the granular matter, and can maintain the excretion disposal material in a preferred sanitary state.
The above described excretion disposal material is manufactured by: a granulating step of granulating a core portion by blending a core portion raw material composed mainly of pulp with water; a covering step of forming a covering portion by spraying a covering portion raw material, which is powdery and contains highly absorbent resin, onto a surface of the core portion granulated in the granulating step; and a drying step of drying a granular matter obtained in the covering step with hot air (refer, for example, to Patent Document 1).
Patent Document 1: Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2007-190025